When it’s summertime on the beaches of Glendo State Park’s reservoir, unlikely sights rising to the sky aren’t uncommon. In 2023, it was a 6-foot-tall, slouchy cowboy boot pointing toward the setting sun, looking almost like real leather.
But it wasn’t leather, it was all sand — 1.5 tons of Glendo State Park’s Rocky Mountain sand, standing a wee bit taller than its maker.
Catherine Johnson Morris, who lives in Casper, isn’t a magician. But don’t tell that to all the people who gather to watch her turn sand and water into spectacular creations at Glendo State Park, where she frequently indulges what she describes as something of an addiction.
“I have been fascinated with sand since I went on vacation with my family in Florida in 2019,” Morris told Cowboy State Daily. “That was the first time I ever made a sandcastle or anything like that as an adult. And I got very fascinated with it.”
Before long, as she played with the sugary white sands on a beach in Destin, Florida, she was noticing how if she did things a certain way, she could make something that looked almost exactly like hair.
“So, I decided to see if I could make something that looked like a rag mop dog,” she said.
Before long, a giant mama rag mop dog was on the white sandy beach, with a young pup learning to fetch sticks.
She found the process enthralling. She just loved the way it felt when she was touching it.
“I loved watching it move,” she said. “Everything about it was just totally fascinating. I was so addicted to it that I just wanted to spend all the time on the beach, playing in the sand. They had to practically drag me away.”
Riding For The Wyoming Brand
Morris goes to a lot of sand sculpture competitions these days, and at every one of them she wears a Wyoming branded T-shirt with the bucking bronco logo so people know out loud and proud that she is representing the Cowboy State.
People will stop and stare at the shirt and her sand sculptures, going back and forth in amazement. Sculptors have to practice to get to Morris’ level of skill, and Morris can just see the gears working in their minds.
“Where in Wyoming can you practice sand sculpture?” they’ll ask finally, perplexed.
Morris just smiles. It’s her little secret.
While it’s true there are no ocean beaches in Wyoming, that doesn’t mean there’s no sand.
In fact, ocean sand has nothing on the Rocky Mountain sand she has found at Glendo State Park. It’s a forgiving sand, perfect for beginners to practice with, she said.
“It is the most fantastic sand,” Morris said. “Just absolutely fantastic for sculpting.”
What makes it so remarkable is that it’s never been tumbled and rolled by the ocean.
“It’s still quite angular,” Morris explained. “So, it packs really well. I tell people it’s like stacking FedEx boxes. Some of the corners are broken off, and they might not be perfect rectangles anymore, but they stack much better. Like a Jenga cube.”
Sand that’s been rolled around and beaten up by the ocean is closer in shape to a football.
“You can stack footballs,” Morris concedes. “Like you can stack oranges at the grocery store. But we all know what happens when you take the wrong orange, right?”
The other place Morris practices quite a bit is her own sand pit, which she built inside the sunroom of her Casper home instead of a hot tub.
She has a heater there, adequate on days that are not too cold. So, when she’s craving some time with the sand, she’ll sneak some practice in there.
It’s relaxing, soothing and helps her work through ideas for the coming summer, when sand sculpture competitions beckon on the far shores of the nation.
“I do a sculpture and then I knock it down and turn it into something else,” she said. “I just continually recycle the sand.”
Catherine Johnson Morris poses with a sandcastle at Glendo State Park. (Courtesy Catherine Johnson Morris) 
Tools for making sand sculptures are surprisingly simple. Shovels, forms, some cake spatulas and concrete trowels. Water, maybe some wet and dry brushes, and away Catherine Johnson Morris goes. (Courtesy Catherine Johnson Morris) 
Sunlight plays across the face of a practice castle at Glendo State Park. (Courtesy Catherine Johnson Morris) 
Catherine Johnson Morris poses with her Frogwarts castle, made at a Fort Horon, Michigan, sand sculpture competition, which was 9.5 feet tall and took 10 tons of sand to build. (Courtesy Catherine Johnson Morris) 
At a competition in Port Huron, Michigan, Catherine Johnson Morris created "Frogwarts." (Courtesy Catherine Johnson Morris) 
People often gather to watch Morris when she's buliding sandcastles. That leads to some impromptu beach lessons on sand sculpting with children, who just can't resist, not even for their cellphones. (Courtesy Catherine Johnson Morris) 
Another of Catherine Johnson Morris' castles, this one with a winding road that leads up to it. The arches are particularly challenging. (Courtesy Catherine Johnson Morris) 
A trout snaps its tail as it rises from the river, after a fisherman's lure. The sculpture lights up at night, and it's one of those Catherin Johnson Morris did at Glendo State Park, to practice for a competition in Oregon. (Courtesy Catherine Johnson Morris)
Simple Tools, Complex Ideas
The tools of Morris’ trade might surprise beginners to competitive sand sculpting. They seem too simple for the breadth of complexity possible with sand.
Cake spatulas are the odds-on favorite for Morris. And not just because her hobby used to be making extreme cakes.
“All of the sculptors use frosting spatulas,” she said. “They’re rigid enough, they’re flat, and you can push on them. You can cut through (the sand) and it doesn’t leave teeth marks the way a butter knife or steak knife would.”
They’re also cheap and portable, one of the most versatile tools in the sand sculpting kit that she packs into the back of her vehicle.
Her favorite of all is a frosting spatula that belonged to her mother, who made wedding cakes and taught her the basics of baking cakes.
“When my mom passed away, I turned her frosting spatula into a tool, and then one of my concrete trowels I use was my dad’s.”
The handle of her mom’s spatula is colored turquoise so she doesn’t lose it. These are tools that feel good to Morris. They’re like lucky charms.
And they remind her of her roots, a family that could always figure things out, just like the pioneers of old.
Morris’ practice sessions at Glendo State Park helped inspire a sand sculpture competition there the last three years. That’s why Morris built the cowboy boot in 2023. She figured for the state’s first sand sculpture competition, she ought to build something uniquely Wyoming.
What says it better than a cowboy boot with a bucking bronco?
Morris has done an exhibition sculpture each time for the Glendo contest and, if there’s another, she’ll be there. Figuring out new stuff under a bright blue Wyoming sky.
Not An Artist
Figuring things out was one of the big challenges of sand sculpting for Morris. She’s never considered herself an artist, much less a sculptor.
“I still can’t draw two dimensionally,” she said. “I can do a stick figure, but that’s about it.”
Her designs start with big wooden frames that make box shapes and sheets of plastic that she can clamp into place in various sizes of cylinders. Between the square of wooden forms and the cylinders, she has found she can make almost anything.
The first step is to load sand and water into her forms. Then comes the fun part called the “pound up.” Or, if you like, a sand dance, which is kind of the opposite of a rain dance. Sand sculptors are really hoping it doesn’t rain — at least not too hard, anyway.
“You use a tamping bar, and you tamp it down, and you dance in it, and you keep filling (the forms) up and filling them up,” Morris said.
Finally, when absolutely no more sand or water will go into the forms, the sand is packed in enough to begin sculpting. The forms are taken off and the frosting spatula from her mom comes out, along with the concrete trowel from her dad.
She uses these to scoop sand away, working from high to low on the sculpture. She’ll use a straw to blow sand from cracks. She has a set of wet and dry brushes, too.
From that, cowboy boots have stood, and giant trout that light up at night have flashed their tails. Astronaut girls wearing helmets and space pajamas have taken one giant leap for sand sculptors everywhere, and pirates have mourned the loss of their ships, wrecked on some merciless Seventh Sea shore.
For competitions, she doesn’t make a lot of sandcastles. The problem with sandcastles in a competition is, if a building falls down it can be swept away as if it wasn’t supposed to be there. If that happens to a nose or something like that, though, it’s readily apparent. So, sandcastles get judged more harshly.
Still, she did build one. It was her tallest ever, at 9.5 feet tall with an impossible 2-foot arch. It took 10 tons of sand to make.
“People didn’t believe the arch could be done without something inside it,” Morris said. “They kept saying, ‘You have to be putting a stick in there or something.’”
Finally, to prove them wrong, Morris took a sharp bladed knife to it, “Samurai-ing” the arch down once the competition ended.
“It took like six swipes to cut through it, because it was packed so tightly,” she said. “And I had someone hold my camera while I did it, so there was a video of me chopping through it.”
Wrecking her creation didn’t bother Morris too much. Everything made with sand is ephemeral, and that’s just part of the magic.
“They last as long as Mother Nature allows,” Morris said.
And then it’s time to dream of something new.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
